Yesterday,� we got an early preview of the first case study Google will publish on the use of estimated cross-device conversions in AdWords. It features 1-800-Flowers and also addresses the company’s use of click-to-call.

When Google first announced the release of estimated cross-device conversions in October, it seemed to be received with a collective shrug. Much like the view-through conversion metric, several marketers I spoke with at the time were skeptical of its worth. Yet, there are many, such as the 1-800-Flowers team, who have embraced the new insights as a positive move toward giving marketers a more holistic view of their AdWords contribution.

This morning, I spoke with Amit Shah, Vice President of Online, Mobile and Social for 1-800-Flowers about the case study findings and how he and his team have use the cross-device data to inform their marketing efforts. 1-800-Flowers was part of the beta test and began looking at cross-device conversion estimates in July 2013.

First the stats: When looking at estimated cross-device conversions, 1-800-Flowers saw the overall conversion contribution from AdWords rise 7 percent when counting orders that started on one device and ended on another. The contribution from mobile devices increased by 4 percent when looking at conversions that started with a mobile click.

It’s probably not too surprising that click-to-call has worked well for the company. After all, the very name 1-800-Flowers was explicitly designed to drive phone orders when the company was founded over 20 years ago. Shah says that 8 to 10 percent of AdWords revenue now comes through click-to-call on mobile devices.

I asked Shah the obvious question about whether he viewed this new data with skepticism. He said that while tends to take a skeptical view of attribution systems in general (and obviously understand that Google is the one running the auction), the amount of data Google gives it an unparalleled view of the world. ” Whenever Google introduces measurement tools, I tend to take it pretty seriously because of their volume. This is the start of what I think mobile has been lacking,” he says.

“The Users Are The Winners”

“Mobile is where the users are moving,” says Shah. “The users are the winners with this data availability because marketers will think more about the mobile experience than they do now. This is a fundamental change because it’s the user that is being taken into account now.”

To those who still have their doubts about using the cross-device data to inform their marketing decisions, Shah says, “We have moved on from the ROI discussion to ROMI, return on marginal investment. What we now use internally allows me to ask the question, where should I be investing my marginal dollars for the most efficacy. We always kind of knew that our customers were moving to mobile, and we have been moving that way for five years, but we weren’t able to [fully understand the behavior].

Shah says they are also seeing tablet behavior beginning to morph to a hybrid of that seen on phones and desktops, with customers using click-to-call on some of the newer Android tablets. iPad users, however, still demonstrate typical tablet content consumption behaviors.

Product listing ads have been competitive in the flower delivery market from day one it seems. Shah says PLAs continue to be a very important part of the mix. “We see them evolving both in how Google is testing the display of the ads as well as the algorithm.” They haven’t seen the same traction from mobile PLAs as non-mobile yet, but believe that will change and that the image-based ad units are being well received by users on mobile.

With the insights Shah and his team have gleaned by looking at cross-device conversions, he says they are asking themselves more questions about the mobile experiences they are giving prospective customers. “We are very deeply of the view that we want to run our marketing from a very user centric lens. We ask, do we have a real view of how customers are searching for when they are sending a gift to their loved ones? Are we part of that process? With cross-device conversions, we have better insight into whether we are really getting our message to our customers by each medium.

“Now with this data, what marketers should really ask themselves is, if customers are starting their journey on mobile and we’re not providing a good experience, were are under serving our audience.”

Google has unveiled its plans for a new type of "smart contact lens" intended to help people with diabetes keep track of their fluctuating glucose levels in a passive way, instead of requiring a painful pin-prick several times a day.

The lens is said to contain "chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter" and an antenna "thinner than a human hair" in order to detect and then warn users of low or high glucose levels, allowing them to take action.

The project is part of Google X, Google's research and development lab for unusual and ambitious ideas that last year introduced the Project Loon Internet balloon project for remote areas.

Normally, diabetes sufferers would either have to wear glucose monitors and prick themselves with a pin multiple times per day in order to check their glucose levels, which left unchecked can cause long-term damage to the eyes, kidneys and heart, Google X co-founders Brian Otis and Babak Parviz said in a blog post.

"It's disruptive, and it's painful," they continued. "And, as a result, many people with diabetes check their blood glucose less often than they should."

Google's device is said to be built to take glucose readings once per second, with tiny electronic components embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material. Additionally, the idea of adding tiny LEDs to the lenses has been mooted, giving users a warning as soon as action is required to bring glucose levels back to normal.

Google says it is "in discussions" with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which controls medical products in the U.S., and the pair asked for partners to help with the development. "We're not going to do this alone: we plan to look for partners who are experts in bringing products like this to market," they said.

"It's still early days for this technology, but we've completed multiple clinical research studies, which are helping to refine our prototype," they continued. "We hope this could someday lead to a new way for people with diabetes to manage their disease."

Other contact lenses featuring similar technology have been considered before, including a Microsoft Research-backed project from 2011.

This article was originally published on V3.

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Facebook has released a new feature similar to one Twitter has offered for quite some time. A new trending box will appear on the top right side of your Facebook news stream page.

Facebook's trending topics will highlight links to popular stories on Facebook. Clicking through to these topics will show you what other people are saying about it.

The new trending future is designed to get people talking about interesting things that are happening in the world, as well as to keep Facebook users informed of news and other trending topics. It is personalized to each user, so in addition to seeing topics based on things you're interested in, you'll also see what's trending across Facebook overall.

Here are a couple of screenshots showing what the feature looks like:

In the Golden Globe example, the screenshot shows a link to a BuzzFeed story about the Golden Globes, Kelly Osbourne showing a rehearsal photo she shared along with her comments, and finally a link to an ABC news story about a Golden Globes' attendee.

It's unclear how these stories and headlines are curated by Facebook, but each story and link on the trending is landing page also shows the number of comments, shares, and likes for each.

Trending is rolling out now, so you might not see it active in your accounts yet. For those who have it, they are definitely reporting it as being very heavily skewed toward fluffier news, like celebrity current events and sports headlines rather than CNN or world news.

Twitter has long taken advantage of the trending topics idea, so it's not too surprising to see Facebook marketing off something very similar. Twitter is definitely a go to place for breaking news, because it often breaks the news before you see it on CNN, Google News, or even on the Associated Press feed. However, I suspect that this is more going to be used by people who just happen to be on Facebook and look at it, rather than as a go to place for people looking for breaking news information.

Don't be surprised to see a form of advertising or other kind of monetization added to Facebook's trending feature. There are a few different ways they can implement it, such as specific sites paying to get preference to have their site's links featured prominently either in the trending box or on the landing page the users take to on Facebook.

The new trending topics feature is available now in the U.S., Canada, UK, India, and Australia, with it likely being rolled out to other countries later.

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Google flipped the switch this morning on a new design for its Google Alerts emails.

The change brings Google Alerts closer in line with Google’s general aesthetic. The emails now have a similarly clean look-and-feel to the card-style layout that’s becoming so prevalent in Google search results, Google Now, on Google’s mobile apps and elsewhere.

The new alerts tell you what kind of alert you’re getting (hourly, etc.), have larger headlines to click on and get three social sharing buttons: Google+, Facebook and Twitter. There were no social buttons in the old alerts. Also new is a “Flag as irrelevant” link with each story.

Gone from the old alert emails is a link to “See all stories on this topic.”

Here’s a comparison between an old Google Alert that reached my In box during the 6 am PT hour, and then the new version that came in within the past hour.

Old Alert Email

New Alert Email

I’ve contacted Google to see if this is a permanent change or if I’m in a limited test. No reply yet, but I’m seeing plenty of tweets this morning from others also seeing the new-look alerts. Are you?

Postscript: In testing the new social buttons, I came upon a bug in the system somewhere. The ampersand in that first headline breaks the sharing when trying to post to Twitter:

That only happens when using the Twitter button; sharing that same headline to Facebook and Google+ didn’t break.

Google has unveiled its plans for a new type of "smart contact lens" intended to help people with diabetes keep track of their fluctuating glucose levels in a passive way, instead of requiring a painful pin-prick several times a day.

The lens is said to contain "chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter" and an antenna "thinner than a human hair" in order to detect and then warn users of low or high glucose levels, allowing them to take action.

The project is part of Google X, Google's research and development lab for unusual and ambitious ideas that last year introduced the Project Loon Internet balloon project for remote areas.

Normally, diabetes sufferers would either have to wear glucose monitors and prick themselves with a pin multiple times per day in order to check their glucose levels, which left unchecked can cause long-term damage to the eyes, kidneys and heart, Google X co-founders Brian Otis and Babak Parviz said in a blog post.

"It's disruptive, and it's painful," they continued. "And, as a result, many people with diabetes check their blood glucose less often than they should."

Google's device is said to be built to take glucose readings once per second, with tiny electronic components embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material. Additionally, the idea of adding tiny LEDs to the lenses has been mooted, giving users a warning as soon as action is required to bring glucose levels back to normal.

Google says it is "in discussions" with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which controls medical products in the U.S., and the pair asked for partners to help with the development. "We're not going to do this alone: we plan to look for partners who are experts in bringing products like this to market," they said.

"It's still early days for this technology, but we've completed multiple clinical research studies, which are helping to refine our prototype," they continued. "We hope this could someday lead to a new way for people with diabetes to manage their disease."

Other contact lenses featuring similar technology have been considered before, including a Microsoft Research-backed project from 2011.

This article was originally published on V3.

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Microsoft Bing’s Senior Product Manager, Duane Forrester, wrote last night at the Bing Webmaster Blog that it is only a myth that in today’s ranking algorithms that a keyword rich domain name will make enough of an impact on your rankings to give you a major boost above your competitors.

Duane said that maybe “10 years ago” there was some truth to that but today – that is not the case.

The domain and keywords in that “domain send less and less” ranking signals to the overall Bing ranking algorithm. Duane said this is a good thing because the other signals can rank sites based on better merits than the words in a domain name plus “it�s better simply because those sites trying to abuse their way to the top with a keyword rich domain and irrelevant or poor content cease to rank well.”

But it doesn’t mean having keywords in a domain name is bad. Duane said it is important to do what is best for your users.

What’s interesting is that after Google made changes to its Ad Rank logic to favor ad extensions and formats in October,�RKG saw “a clear decline in CPC around that time, particularly around brand keywords.” Thus, just the 3 percent net increase in CPCs for the quarter.

Google PLA CPCs Rise Above Text Ads For The First Time

On average, product listing ad CPCs began outpacing non-brand text CPCs for the first time in Q4, highlighting the increased competition for these image ads among retailers during the holiday season. Spending on PLAs increased 72 percent year-over-year among RKG’s client sample.

Retailers running both Google Product Listing Ads and text ads generated 42 percent of their non-brand traffic from PLAs. For more details, Mark Ballard,�Senior Research Analyst at RKG, recently wrote an in-depth column on Search Engine Land about the impact of PLAs on non-brand traffic.

Bing Ads Product Ads, which continued to run in closed beta through the quarter, accounted for 7 percent of non-brand ad spend and an average of 5 percent of non-brand revenues from Bing Ads among RKG’s participating clients. ROI was lower than Bing Ads text ads, but RKG says the ad unit has shown potential.

Mobile CPCs Remain Low Even As Spend, Traffic Increase

Smartphones and tablets generated a combined 32 percent of paid search clicks and accounted for 25 percent of paid search ad spend.� Smartphone CPCs remained 60 percent lower than desktop and tablet CPCs. Similarly, IgnitionOne reported a 13 percent drop in smartphone CPCs in Q4 compared to a year ago.

RKG saw mobile traffic spike on both Thanksgiving and Christmas day to 43 percent and 45 percent respectively. The week of Christmas, mobile traffic share hit 40 percent, up from 30 percent in October, which could indicate a new benchmark for Q1 2014. RKG reports that, in years past, mobile has sustained its Q4 traffic share into the following year.

Thirty years ago three little old ladies asked an exceedingly simply question about a hamburger. The premise of their collective query quickly permeated pop culture when the catchphrase made its way onto T-shirts, pithy comic routines, and eventually into the 1984 Mondale vs. Hart presidential debate.

The iconic slogan "Where's the Beef?" no longer resonates with the third-pound-bacon-stuffed-cheese-laden-mega-burgers served up from today's fast food obesity express lanes. However, several sardonic correlations can be made with today's digital environment, especially when it comes to search.

Before we ask "where's the search?" we need to understand how and why searching has been supplanted by finding and answering.

Let's take a brief walk through an abridged history of search in order to better understand how the engines have whetted digital marketers' appetites for organic search results.

Search B.G. (Before Google)

Originally, the Internet was nothing but a compendium of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites that users could peruse in an attempt to find specific communal files. As the list of web servers joining the Internet grew, the World Wide Web became the interface of choice for accessing information on the Internet. Naturally, the need for finding and organizing the geographically dispersed data files developed.

In the early 1990s, search engines spawned from users' needs to readily navigate the files on the web servers that made up the Internet.

Archie became the first index that attempted to organize this content. Gopher made the database searchable.

In 1993, Mosaic provided the graphical interface that greatly improved web browsing. All we needed was a way to find all the content that was out there.

Enter Wandex – the first title tag web crawler, which was quickly followed by its full-text indexing cousin, WebCrawler in 1994.

Silicon Valley was becoming the epicenter of search engine innovation in 1993.

Excite was launched, and then the Yahoo directory. WebCrawler, Lycos, Infoseek and AltaVista crawlers quickly followed. Inktomi and HotBot joined the search engine club in 1996.

This was an exhilarating time filled with revolutionary digital discoveries.

Then an interesting thing happened. Ask Jeeves joined the crowded marketplace and forced us all to consider what natural language search queries would dig up in its expansive treasure trove of text-based content. The first answer engine was borne.

Search A.G. (After Google)

MSN carved out its niche in the now teeming search market by being the first engine to bundle its capabilities with connectivity in 1998 (and not be a member's only club like AOL). Every search engine's primary directive was to find and organize the distributed data found via the Internet.

Everything changed in 1999 when Google made size matter – at least in terms of the number of web pages indexed. With two years of crawling under its belt, Googlebot began winning the index size wars and started to take market share from Yahoo.

That's when a funny thing happened on the way to the Internet; the more Google's search index grew, the less relevant its search results became. Title tags and meta descriptions were growing increasingly infested with misdirected terminology that didn't properly communicate the context of the content and, subsequently, misdirected users from finding relevant search results.

Granted, the web was still so new that perusing 10 blue links per page of search results became a luxurious pastime for the blossoming digerati. Sometimes the results you really wanted were actually on page five, not just dampened results in Google. Nostalgic search purists enjoyed the luxury of determining relevancy on their own big screens.

Fast-forward to 2014 and such thoughts are wholly outdated because organic search optimization simply is no longer one dimensional.

Search Today

Desktop search has changed dramatically over the past two years because algorithmic results were polluted with contextual dissonance and, once again, relevancy suffered. The 10 blue links have been augmented with image carousels, sitelinks, breadcrumb links, knowledge panels, and related searches and such.

Searchers are presented with a dizzying array of Page 1 options. If your content isn't there, it's not optimal.

Search is now a core function of almost every social venue, monetizing its way into a sustainable future. How you optimize your video content as opposed to your image library is quite different.

You can't provide visitors with a one-way social experience and expect to gain friends, likes, +1's, and pins. If your content isn't customized to the social venue, then it isn't optimal.

Mobile device market forces have accelerated the need to optimize for local search functionality on the small screen. If your content isn't digitally dexterous, then it's likely producing a sub-optimal search experience. And if you don't help the search engines understand the context of digitally rich content on any device, then your search referrals will likely produce diminishing returns.

This is the challenge of content optimization in 2014. Organizations need to produce high-quality and authoritative, yet informatively entertaining, content that is device agnostic and encourages a uniquely human social echo if it is to be deemed search engine optimal.

Twenty years ago online organizations needed to be in every contending search engine, directory and database in order to allow for a burgeoning audience of potential visitors to find them.

"Where's the search?" in 2014 and beyond? It's everywhere, anytime, for everyone, on any device imaginable. Now we just have to make it an optimal experience for all.

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Yandex has announced a deal with Facebook, one that gives the Russian search giant gain direct access to public Facebook data.

Posts by Facebook users in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, other CIS countries, and Turkey will be available for indexing by Yandex as soon as it has been published.

Seeking to collaborate with major search engines, the full access to the “firehose” of data directly from Facebook only augments what Yandex has already been doing with data from Twitter, LiveJournal, and other social networks.

Facebook content from the aforementioned countries will pop up in Yandex’s Blogs search results, joining results from other blogs, microblogs and social networks.

“Yandex will use data from Facebook’s public firehose feed to improve the quality of its search results,” according to a Yandex spokesperson. Yandex plans to incorporate various content formats that have had “particular resonance” on Facebook.

“The popularity of materials on Facebook will be taken into consideration when ranking search results,” according to Yandex.

Yandex stressed that only content published to Facebook as "public" will be indexed. Anything marked as private won't be indexed.

In the U.S., Bing is the only search engine that has access to Facebook data and have incorporated likes, shares and recommendations into search results since 2010. Google and Facebook had a parting of the ways around that same time, culminating with Google removing Facebook information from the built-in Android Contacts app.

Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed. However there are mumblings that Yandex has free access to the data. Either way, the deal is quite interesting.

Last year, Yandex released a social search app called Wonder, designed to search public social media posts. Facebook complained and blocked Wonder, eventually leading to the complete shutdown of the social search.

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The ever-helpful Google Now service is now available on your desktop for both Mac, Windows and Chrome OS users. This Google Now service features Google Now cards that are run through the latest Google Chrome build (Chrome Canary) and will work for those users who are currently logged-in to Chrome.

According to the “Google Operating System” blog to enable the feature users need to simply follow these directions:

“You only need to go to�chrome://flags/#enable-google-now�, then switch from “Default” to “Enabled” and click “Relaunch Now” at the bottom of the page to restart the browser. ”

Once signed in and activated, users will see a “”Google Now on your desktop! Stay connected to what you need to know, across all devices,” and begin seeing cards and notifications. According to Google Now cards on the desktop will work harmoniously with mobile devices saying:

“If you use Google Now on your mobile device, you can see certain Now cards on your desktop computer if you’re signed into Chrome, including weather, sports scores, commute traffic, and event reminders cards. Some of these cards may be based on the location of your mobile device.”

If looking to turn off the Google Now cards, Windows users can click on the alert icon in the notifications tray in the lower right of the screen and Mac users can open their notifications center in the upper right of the screen�.

For more information see the official Google�support page�and the Google Operating System blog post. Images courtesy of the Google Operating System blog.

Adobe has announced integration between two key products in their Adobe Marketing Cloud service.

Adobe Campaign, previously known as Neolane, is an analytics tool that helps create personalized experiences based on customer habits and preferences. It is now being integrated with Adobe Experience Manager, which helps manage content across channels while helping content creators with agile, rapid deployment across owned media.

The combination of both products helps position Adobe as a leader in cross-channel campaign management. Integrating data from both anonymous and previously identified Web visitors becomes seamless with a single set of tools. This will help content managers provide a more personalized experience.

In addition to the integration, Adobe also announced several enhancement to the products, including:

Real-time interaction management and scalability: Marketers can now effectively deliver large volumes of campaigns, offers, data, and interactions with an enhanced real-time marketing infrastructure.Distributed marketing improvements: New tools, processes, and assets make it easier for marketers to create and customize local campaigns.Reporting enhancements in transactional messaging: Transactional messaging, which completes or confirms a previously agreed upon transaction such as order or delivery confirmations, provides marketers an opportunity to increase brand loyalty and drive incremental revenue.Additional improvements: German language support and several technical platform performance enhancements.

"Marketers need a better way to create, optimize, and deliver content across all online and offline channels," said Suresh Vittal, vice president, marketing strategy, Digital Marketing, Adobe. "The integration between Adobe's leading web content and campaign management solutions enables marketers to deliver unparalleled, personalized experiences in the channels their customers prefer."

Adobe has been releasing enhancements to their Marketing Cloud platform with regularity. Last Fall, Adobe added six new features to Analytics and added cloud-based mobile services for measuring apps.

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A U.S. court has ordered local business review website Yelp to reveal the names of seven of its anonymous reviewers.

The order follows a lawsuit filed by a firm called Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, which suspected that some of the reviews placed online about it were made up.

The only way for Hadeed to find out whether this was the case was to subpoena Yelp for the information, the Washington Times reported. Hadeed pressed, Yelp resisted, and chose to ignore a county court order, and an additional court was charged with ruling.

The Virginia state Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the carpet cleaning company and insisted that Yelp must reveal the names of those users that otherwise would have remained anonymous.

"In its complaint, Hadeed alleged that it tried to match the negative reviews with its customer database but could find no record that the negative reviewers were actually Hadeed customers. Consequently, Hadeed alleged that the negative reviewers were not actual customers; instead, the Doe defendants falsely represented themselves to be customers of Hadeed," said the court's ruling.

"Hadeed's complaint further alleged that the negative comments were defamatory because they falsely stated that Hadeed had provided shoddy service to each reviewer."

Yelp will now have to come up with the names of the reviewers, while Hadeed Carpet Cleaning will also get $1,000 toward its legal costs.

The reviews looked dodgy to Hadeed because they came from areas where it doesn't operate (e.g., New Jersey and Washington).

While it is usually permissable to be anonymous, the courts do not look favorably on defamation. If these "reviewers" weren't customers of the company, then the negative reviews could not possibly be truthful and might be libel. The court ordered Yelp to comply in order to ascertain whether this is the case.

Yelp posted on its blog in response to the announcement. It said that litigation is not a viable alternative to customer service and that an overreaction to a bad review can be worse than a bad review itself.

"Other courts and other states have shown support for citizens' First Amendment right to speak anonymously. Consumers may feel the need to speak anonymously for privacy reasons or for fear of unfair retaliation by a business," it added in a statement to The Inquirer. "This ruling could have a chilling effect on free speech in Virginia specifically and Yelp will continue to fight to protect consumers' privacy and free speech rights. This ruling also shows the need for strong state and federal legislation to prevent meritless lawsuits aimed solely at stifling free speech."

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

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Google paid search results that included pictures of products influenced 31 percent of online purchases during the holidays, according to Baynote's 4th Annual Holiday Shopper Survey.

The survey offers many other interesting insights into how consumers interacted with online shopping sites over the shopping weekend ending with Cyber Monday.

Free shipping: This was a much more important factor for customers determining where to purchase from online. Sixty percent of shoppers felt free shipping, without any conditions attached, was extremely important, up from 58 percent in 2012.Price matching: Physical retailers should be concerned on price matching from online sites. It's quite common for physical retailers to offer to match competitor's flyers and sales, but they refuse to match online pricing. Sixty percent of shoppers purchased a product from Amazon or another online competitor while they were actually in a store, because the store wouldn't match the price.Branded Apps: Usage of branded apps, although some people have a love-hate relationship with them, has been increasing greatly. Thirty-four percent of shoppers made a purchase through retailer branded apps, an increase of 48 percent over 2012.Coupons: Shoppers in physical stores redeemed many coupons using a mobile device. Sixty-one percent redeemed a mobile coupon from their smartphone while doing an in store checkout. And 62 percent of those surveyed used their smartphone to compare pricing while in the store.Customer reviews and product ratings: Forty-eight percent of online shoppers were influenced by online reviews and ratings, which was a 45 percent increase over 2012. For in-store shoppers, 37 percent were influenced by reviews and ratings while an impressive 52 percent of shoppers use their phones to look up specific product ratings while they were in the store. Sixty-nine percent of shoppers are doing their own research at home to avoid requiring sales assistance in the store.Email marketing: Sixty-six percent of those surveyed said they make purchases or take advantage of promotions they receive from stores via email.Online inventory: This influenced a large percentage of shoppers – 82 percent will shop at another online site when the original site does not have a specific product in stock. Forty-nine percent of respondents said they will check in-store inventory online before visiting the store.

You can download the full Baynote survey here.

Baynote has also created an infographic with some key holiday shopping stats for 2013:

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Thousands of hotels listed within Google+ Local appear to have had links leading to their official sites “hijacked” and replaced with ones leading to third-party booking services. Google+ Local listings are what Google depends on to provide results in Google Maps or Google Search, when people look for local businesses.

A Hijacked URL

For example, here is the “verified” page for the Courtyard Marriott in Sherman Oaks, California:

The arrows show how the URLs for the hotel’s official website leads to “courtyardmarriott.roomstobook.info” rather than the hotel’s actual page here within the Marriott.com domain�[note: the page has now been removed; see the end of this story].

Thousands Of Hijacked Listings

The hijacked listings all make use of links that lead to either RoomsToBook.Info or RoomsToBook.Net. Doing a search on Google for Google+ Local listings using these domains reveals how thousands of hotels appear to have been hit.

For example, a search for listings using the “RoomsToBook.Info” domain currently brings up 1,880 listings that appear to have been hijacked:

A search for the “RoomsToBook.Net” domain currently brings up another 1,150 listings that seem to have been hijacked:

Rerouting Visitors To Third-Party Booking Sites

Sometimes clicking on one of these hijacked listings for the RoomsToBook.Info or RoomsToBook.Net domains�automatically forwards visitors — redirects them — to landing pages like this one within those domains:

In other cases, visitors were forwarded to the HotelsWhiz.com web site.

Attempts to contact the owners of�RoomsToBook.Info, RoomsToBook.Net and�HotelsWhiz.com have been unsuccessful.

Emails were sent to various addresses listed in the public “whois” information for those domains. A phone call made to the number listed on the HotelsWhiz.com site was answered by a call center in the Philippines, where the woman I spoke with said she worked for i-lotel.com, a site that doesn’t seem to exist.

There’s also been no response to a feedback form used on the HotelsWhiz.com web site, nor from a LinkedIn message sent to�Karim Mawani, who is listed on LinkedIn as the director of HotelsWhiz.com.

I could be that HotelsWhiz isn’t connected with any of this. A third-party affiliate company, one that’s paid for sending leads, could have generated all this without HotelsWhiz’s knowledge.

However, both�RoomsToBook.Info and RoomsToBook.Net use the DNS servers of HotelWhiz.info. DNS is the way that internet URLs know how to direct people to the right places. That suggests a connection to HotelsWhiz.com, especially in that HotelsWhiz.com also uses HotelsWhiz.info for its own DNS.

Whether any of these companies are ultimately responsible for the hijacking is uncertain. All we know so far is that these listings have been hijacked, but exactly how or why isn’t clear.

Postscript (4:10pm ET): I did hear back from Mawani via LinkedIn, who said:

We have recently seen this issue and have reported to Google webmaster already. If you have seen any links please forward it to me and I will submit the request.

Our team is already in process of blocking list of certain domains and IP addresses from back-linking us.

Thank you for pointing this out if you have any more external domains acting in above manner please report it to us on

I hadn’t noticed this response initially, because I assumed LinkedIn would forward the email or a notification to my regular account. Mawani flagged the response to me via email just now — the same email I also contacted him with directly over all this, so I’m unclear why he didn’t respond that way.

I’m following up with him for more details, including why his company shares the same DNS as the two other sites.

Postscript (6:30pm ET): Per the comments below, the�Philippines call center woman seems to have been referring to l-lotels.com rather than i-lotels.com. The home page of that site looks identical to the HotelsWhiz.com site, other than its home page.

It also turns out that the l-lotels.com may have also been used to hijack some listings, as shown below:

The domain appears to have been used in relation to 371 verified listings and 1,460 listings overall.

Google: No Comment, But Clean-Up Behind-The-Scenes

Google would be the best company to speak on what happened, but after being asked, it said it had no comment. Twice — because I asked twice if Google was sure it didn’t want to say anything [note: see below, where after this story was published, Google said confirmed it was aware of the issue and working to fix it].

Google has clearly been busy, however, now that it has been alerted to the issue. Some pages that were formerly in Google+ Local have now been entirely removed, such as these:

Trying to go to these, all of which were previously verified Google+ Local listings, now brings up error pages.

In other cases, while Google’s search results still show that a page has had its URL altered, such as for this:

The page itself has been updated to list the official web address:

There are also duplicate pages that exist, which is perhaps how Google is dealing with pages that were verified, yet corrupted, by downgrading them in favor of unverified but correct pages.

For example, this story showed an example of the verified page for the Sherman Oaks Courtyard Marriott having a hijacked URL. While that page was still live, a search on Google Maps brought up a different, unverified page here.

And, about an hour after I saw and documented that verified but hijacked page coexisting alongside the unverified but correct page, the verified page was completely removed from Google+ Local, probably as part of Google’s clean-up efforts.

Postscript (2:37pm): Google has now said that I can confirm it is aware of the issue and is working to fix it.

Google Images has made a great change to its search results. Users can now search for images with specific usage rates more easily. This will be extremely helpful for webmasters and others to find images that they can use for publishing on their own sites.

While Google has actually offered filtering based on photo licenses since 2009, it was a little-known search feature buried in the advanced search options. With the change, users can easily see it and filter the results accordingly.

To access it, simply click "Search Tools" on the image results page, and along with the usual search settings such as size and date, there is now a new drop-down for usage rights. The default is set to "not filtered by license" but users can change it to "labeled for reuse", "labeled for commercial reuse", "labeled for reuse with modification", and "labeled for commercial reuse of modification".

Sites such as Flickr, as well as stock photography sites that offer a variety of photo rights, have long had this type of filtering in their own search results. Bing began offering its own license search filter last summer, so it's surprising that Google took so long to make the change obvious to the average searcher.

As a word of caution, as with any image search, do be aware there are sites that republish photos allowing for reuse, but are actually not the original owner. However, using Google’s reverse image search can help determine the originating owner of an image and to determine what the correct licensing on the photo is.

Images & SearchHow to Find Free Images With Google's Advanced Image SearchImage Optimization: How to Rank on Image SearchHow to Use Images in Your Link Building Campaigns

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Thousands of hotels listed within Google+ Local appear to have had links leading to their official sites “hijacked” and replaced with ones leading to third-party booking services. Google+ Local listings are what Google depends on to provide results in Google Maps or Google Search, when people look for local businesses.

A Hijacked URL

For example, here is the “verified” page for the Courtyard Marriott in Sherman Oaks, California:

The arrows show how the URLs for the hotel’s official website leads to “courtyardmarriott.roomstobook.info” rather than the hotel’s actual page here within the Marriott.com domain�[note: the page has now been removed; see the end of this story].

Thousands Of Hijacked Listings

The hijacked listings all make use of links that lead to either RoomsToBook.Info or RoomsToBook.Net. Doing a search on Google for Google+ Local listings using these domains reveals how thousands of hotels appear to have been hit.

For example, a search for listings using the “RoomsToBook.Info” domain currently brings up 1,880 listings that appear to have been hijacked:

A search for the “RoomsToBook.Net” domain currently brings up another 1,150 listings that seem to have been hijacked:

Rerouting Visitors To Third-Party Booking Sites

Sometimes clicking on one of these hijacked listings for the RoomsToBook.Info or RoomsToBook.Net domains�automatically forwards visitors — redirects them — to landing pages like this one within those domains:

In other cases, visitors were forwarded to the HotelsWhiz.com web site.

Attempts to contact the owners of�RoomsToBook.Info, RoomsToBook.Net and�HotelsWhiz.com have been unsuccessful.

Emails were sent to various addresses listed in the public “whois” information for those domains. A phone call made to the number listed on the HotelsWhiz.com site was answered by a call center in the Philippines, where the woman I spoke with said she worked for i-lotel.com, a site that doesn’t seem to exist.

There’s also been no response to a feedback form used on the HotelsWhiz.com web site, nor from a LinkedIn message sent to�Karim Mawani, who is listed on LinkedIn as the director of HotelsWhiz.com.

I could be that HotelsWhiz isn’t connected with any of this. A third-party affiliate company, one that’s paid for sending leads, could have generated all this without HotelsWhiz’s knowledge.

However, both�RoomsToBook.Info and RoomsToBook.Net use the DNS servers of HotelWhiz.info. DNS is the way that internet URLs know how to direct people to the right places. That suggests a connection to HotelsWhiz.com, especially in that HotelsWhiz.com also uses HotelsWhiz.info for its own DNS.

Whether any of these companies are ultimately responsible for the hijacking is uncertain. All we know so far is that these listings have been hijacked, but exactly how or why isn’t clear.

Postscript (4:10pm ET): I did hear back from Mawani via LinkedIn, who said:

We have recently seen this issue and have reported to Google webmaster already. If you have seen any links please forward it to me and I will submit the request.

Our team is already in process of blocking list of certain domains and IP addresses from back-linking us.

Thank you for pointing this out if you have any more external domains acting in above manner please report it to us on

I hadn’t noticed this response initially, because I assumed LinkedIn would forward the email or a notification to my regular account. Mawani flagged the response to me via email just now — the same email I also contacted him with directly over all this, so I’m unclear why he didn’t respond that way.

I’m following up with him for more details, including why his company shares the same DNS as the two other sites.

Postscript (6:30pm ET): Per the comments below, the�Philippines call center woman seems to have been referring to l-lotels.com rather than i-lotels.com. The home page of that site looks identical to the HotelsWhiz.com site, other than its home page.

It also turns out that the l-lotels.com may have also been used to hijack some listings, as shown below:

The domain appears to have been used in relation to 371 verified listings and 1,460 listings overall.

Google: No Comment, But Clean-Up Behind-The-Scenes

Google would be the best company to speak on what happened, but after being asked, it said it had no comment. Twice — because I asked twice if Google was sure it didn’t want to say anything [note: see below, where after this story was published, Google said confirmed it was aware of the issue and working to fix it].

Google has clearly been busy, however, now that it has been alerted to the issue. Some pages that were formerly in Google+ Local have now been entirely removed, such as these:

Trying to go to these, all of which were previously verified Google+ Local listings, now brings up error pages.

In other cases, while Google’s search results still show that a page has had its URL altered, such as for this:

The page itself has been updated to list the official web address:

There are also duplicate pages that exist, which is perhaps how Google is dealing with pages that were verified, yet corrupted, by downgrading them in favor of unverified but correct pages.

For example, this story showed an example of the verified page for the Sherman Oaks Courtyard Marriott having a hijacked URL. While that page was still live, a search on Google Maps brought up a different, unverified page here.

And, about an hour after I saw and documented that verified but hijacked page coexisting alongside the unverified but correct page, the verified page was completely removed from Google+ Local, probably as part of Google’s clean-up efforts.

Postscript (2:37pm): Google has now said that I can confirm it is aware of the issue and is working to fix it.

A good search marketer must understand that the content landscape is changing. This point was once again highlighted in an interesting post written by Jack Marshall at Digiday, on the "death of the webpage".

As the content landscape shifts, and new formats emerge, the reality is that SEO professionals will need to share their budgets and strategies with other channels and some of those may not be SEO friendly to the naked eye.

Need some content examples? We've got 16 for you, all created by the CopyPress team.

All of these examples are going to be content that is in image or video format, making the utilization of the content for SEO difficult. However, skilled search veterans know that multimedia formats can be used to not only garner links, but also worked into a larger strategy that has implications for search.

Vine Videos

Vine is a great way to get concise ideas captured and shared. The app is easy to use, but the inability to upload video produced outside of the Vine keeps the creativity limited. You can share Vine videos across multiple platforms, and since they are embeddable can be utilized on webpages.

The key value for an SEO around quality Vine video creation is going to be creating great content around the video or multiple videos. In this case, Vine videos become a curation play.

The other great thing about Vine is that a lot of video already exists for you to get things rolling without ever picking up a smartphone.

Idea for Utilization: Product videos that demonstrate the value of products your company creates.

Some Ideas

Humor

Stop Motion

Instagram Videos

Instagram videos allow for more customization since you can create and import the video. They are also longer, and therefore better for certain video formats. Like Vine videos, the value to the SEO, beyond basic brand recognition, would be creating content that curates the Instagram videos in some way. This will create both linkable and indexable content.

What's great for SEO professionals is that both Vine and Instagram are likely on the PR and social media teams' shortlist for 2014, so getting to piggyback on their budgets and efforts is a win.

Idea for Utilization: A blog post with interviews taken at a conference.

Some Ideas

Humor

Stop Motion

Animated GIFs

These are nothing new, but there utilization has changed from simply dancing bananas to full on video clips. These are fully customizable, but don't allow for audio.

One reason to use animated GIFs over Instagram or Vine videos is the ability for attribution. GIFs are perfect for platforms such as Tumblr, and being able to attribute the original source material to your site gives you a great way to build links in an organic fashion around multimedia content.

Can GIFs drive traffic and links? I guess you've never been to BuzzFeed before.

Idea for Utilization: Utilization of DIY clips for how-to posts.

Some Ideas

Memes

Memes can be a way to show your brand's fun side. We have found creating new meme concepts better for brands than using most commonly used memes, however depending on your brand voice established memes may indeed work.

The other upside with creating your own memes is attribution. By creating your own creative meme's, housing them on your site, and seeding them socially, you create great linkbait.

Idea for Utilization: Brand specific "meme character" that you can use to relate industry specific humor around.

Some Ideas

Obsessed Pinterest Mom

Poetic Opossum

Angsty Suburban Teen

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Bing now appears to be supporting secure search through the https://www.bing.com�address. Previously, trying to use this address generated an error.

If you conduct a search on Bing, while on the HTTPS URL, it will remain HTTPS and keep your searches secure. This is a new feature Bing quietly started supporting over the weekend.

Cyrus Shepard tested to see if the query data would pass from Bing SSL search to Google Analytics. It is known that the standard protocol on the web is to not pass query referrer data from HTTPS to non-HTTPS, but from HTTPs to HTTPs, it should pass.

I am not sure if Bing SSL will pass query data from HTTPS to HTTPS but it definitely should not pass from Bing SSL to a non-HTTPS site.

Microsoft has not announced any plans for Bing to go SSL yet but this may be a sign that it will come in the near future.

Postscript: A Microsoft spokesperson responded to our request for a comment, below is their response but we do have several follow up questions:

At Bing we are always experimenting to improve the overall search experience and understand that people want choices in how they protect their privacy online. By providing optional access to Bing.com via HTTPS, we are giving everyone the ability to decide how they use Bing while also being thoughtful about how we implement this functionality.

Postscript #2: I asked Bing how will they handle passing referrer and query data to webmasters. They sent me this statement:

At this time we are still evolving our rollout of HTTPS at Bing. As we continue to develop our implementation, we will keep the SEO/SEM community needs top of mind and balance them with consumer privacy and security concerns.Related StoriesGoogle To Begin Encrypting Searches & Outbound Clicks By Default With SSL SearchKeyword �Not Provided� By Google Spikes, Now 7-14% In Cases2011: The Year Google & Bing Took Away From SEOs & PublishersGoogle�s Results Get More Personal With �Search Plus Your World�Google�s (Not Provided) Impacting More Than Just SEO SitesFirefox 14 Now Encrypts Google Searches, But Search Terms Still Will �Leak� OutHow An iOS 6 Change Makes It Seem Like Google Traffic From Safari Has DisappearedGoogle Analytics To Add Search Query Data From Webmaster ToolsHow To Turn (Not Provided) Into Useful, Actionable DataHappy Birthday �Not Provided� � One Year Since Google Began Withholding Search Terms

My previous column showed you the right way to build links in 2014. Now it's time to show you a specific linking tactic that may blow your mind. You're about to learn how to link "Google style."

Internal Linking

It makes sense to initiate any linking campaign at your ownwebsite.

Begin by running a link check. Fix any broken links discovered.

The next step is leveraging the power and trust that is already flowing to your website. This is where competitor analysis comes in.

Now I'm going to let you in on a little secret of mine – the first place I look to for competitors is Google Ventures. And you should, too.

For the uninitiated, Google Ventures is the venture capital arm of Google. They provide seed venture and growth-stage funding to companies – including Uber, Nest, and RetailMeNot. They are financially motivated to build a company, and then sell it at crazy multiples. One means to do that is to drive gobs of organic traffic to their ecommerce holdings.

Websites owned by Google Ventures have direct access to Google. Quoting from their own site "We provide unparalleled (and real) access to Google's massive network of employees and alumni." I assume this includes people that know how the algorithm works and how to optimize for it. I can't imagine a better resource for competitive or comparative analysis.

Start your research by navigating to the portfolio page. You will find over 200 companies that Google has invested in. These companies are categorized as: Consumer, Commerce, Enterprise & Data, Life Science & Health and Seed. Look for a related site.

One of my favorite Google Ventures websites is CustomMade. This website is a marketplace for custom-made products crafted by woodworkers, jewelers, metalworkers, and others. The architecture and navigation, however, is perfectly suited for any ecommerce site.

Like most websites, the majority of linking domains point to the CustomMade home page, making it the most powerful page on the website.

What sets CustomMade apart is how they harness that strength. Check out this footer:

Loads of keyword rich links point to category pages. With the Maker & Gallery indexes, they have essentially placed a sitemap on the main page. I think it's brilliant. Others have called it spam.

Some might argue that GV sites, by virtue of their special relationship with Google would get a pass. I don't believe that's the case here – at least not algorithmically. CustomMade has been affected by various Google algorithm updates, but the current version is generating record traffic:

Because this website has had its ups and downs and is currently on track, it deserves attention. Especially if one doesn't have Google as a partner, but wants to see how Google Developers like Michael Margolis navigate thru SERP turbulence. Margolis' first stab at optimizing the site resulted in a 100 percent increase in organic traffic.

External Linking

CustomMade also employs one of my favorite link building tactics – attracting links form colleges and universities (a.k.a., .edu link building). As with any form of link building, the success rate is directly proportionate to the value of the content.

Before sending any link request, you should ask yourself "what compelling reason does this site have to link to me?" If you can't answer that question, there's no point in hitting the send button.

In the case of CustomMade, the compelling reason is a scholarship. In fact, they offer two different scholarships valued at $1,000 each:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if you follow their lead, you may want to skip the "keyword rich" scholarship names. That said, they have attracted 102 .edu backlinks, which is pretty awesome.

Conclusion

For those who have wondered "what would Google do?", now you have an answer. If you're considering a link building campaign in 2014, following their lead is a good place to start.

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While organic search is still a critical channel for connecting consumers seeking solutions with the brands that offer them, Google seems to be slowly but surely displacing organic content with ads and it’s own content as well as removing any cause / effect signals for optimizing natural search placement. These changes have driven more companies to PPC and social.

The promise of social media has drawn huge investments from companies and brands of all sizes, and yet social networks like Facebook are making organic visibility the Yeti of the social media world. What to do? Run social ads. Create content!

Content Marketing is being touted by many as THE area for focus in 2014. At the same time, many companies are increasingly challenged to sustain brand content creation on pace with business growth goals.

Certainly the convergence of marketing and PR has brought many PR agencies into the content creation game. �The story creation capabilities of Public Relations pros for content marketing function will continue to grow in application, but will it be enough?

What’s the common thread to all of this?�Native Advertising.

Native Advertising enables brands to secure high value placement where interested consumers are looking and engaged. It offers easy pay to play access to highly coveted audiences. It also creates substantial revenue opportunities for publishers and the industries that support content creation and performance optimization.

Along with many other major publishers, the New York Times recently announced it’s entree into the native advertising world with Dell as it’s first customer�(Disclosure: Dell is a social media client of TopRank).

There are a lot of good questions being asked about Native Advertising: Are native ads the new face of converged marketing and PR? Is it the future of content marketing? Or is it a really, really bad idea?

For publishers, it’s about the money. Publications like the New York Times are simply following a monetization trend that publications like Forbes have clearly proven out.��Overall, the trend towards the publishing industry engaging with native ads will continue because the news and media industry are starved for revenue and it represents an all new opportunity.

But what about readers? Are native ads good for consumers? The follow up of course is whether native advertising is good for the subscribers and general readers of these publications. There are also implications for those that syndicate content from these publications.

In an ideal world, paid content only “works” if the content meets similar standards to what’s normally published through editorial filters. “Salesly” content published along side high quality editorial will be ignored or worse, cause dissension against the publication and the brand that is doing the editorial advertising.�The Scientology piece that ran in The Atlantic is a good example of what can happen when things are not so clear.

My concern about native advertising: As native ads become more common and the monetization opportunities explode, there’s no question that the revenue opportunity of native ads will create some blurred lines:�If a reputable publication like the AP�or the New York Times is now willing to take money to publish quality advertorial, how much would it take for them to publish content that doesn’t meet editorial standards? Will editorial standards be maintained when huge payouts are available to fund businesses with other revenue streams drying up?

The bigger picture for marketers. If you know me or have read our stuff here, you know that our approach is integrated and customer focused. There will be times where native advertising makes sense. There will be times when media relations, email marketing and mobile ads make sense. Of course content, community and ease of discovery, consumption and engagement always make sense. It really all depends on the customer and business goals, not the “tactic du jour”.

I do think companies should research native ads and do some tests. Absolutely. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that any one marketing and communications tactic will be your savior. Know your customers and how they discover, consume and act on information. Then plan, implement and optimize the performance of your marketing where it makes sense.

Attract, Engage, Convert where you’ll have real business impact whether that means a new microsite promoted with publicity, email and social ads or a new report, white paper and infographic promoted through blogger relations, PPC and native ads.

What’s your take on native advertising? Evil, Savior or Use as Directed?

New Year's Eve is possibly the only event that is celebrated all around the world regardless of religion, culture, and race, but with one important characteristic: it's based on time zone.

While religious events, like Christmas, Rosh Hashanah, or Ramadan have a time-zone importance (they are celebrated at a specific time every year), they lack the global all-encompassing nature since they are specific to a religion.

Global events like the World Cup, the Olympic Games, or even the Oscars, might have the global importance but they aren't time-zone specific; they happen at a given point in time regardless of the rest of the world's time zone.

New Year's Eve is the one event that has both characteristics – it's global (or as global as it gets) and it's time zone specific. And why is that important? Well, because it creates an almost 20-hour celebration craze on social media that allows us to see how one, scheduled event impacts the world in different ways on social media.

To look into those usage patterns, I analyzed several aspects of the celebration as it transpired on Twitter around the globe as each region welcomed 2014. I analyzed volume of keyword mentions as well as some elements of tweets (like the existence of an image, a link or a hashtag) and charted them across the time zone of the regions that celebrated the New Year's Eve.

In all the charts below, the X-Axis represents midnight in each time zone in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). For example, the data that corresponds with GMT +0 is the activity on Twitter when midnight "hit" London.

"Happy New Year"

The term "Happy New Year" trended heavily on Twitter throughout the New Year's Eve celebrations. As midnight hit every time zone, the term spiked, indicating the level of social media usage in those regions.

As the graph shows, when midnight struck in China and Japan, Twitter exploded with more than 1.6 million tweets that included the term "Happy New Year". What's even more impressive is that the vast majority of these tweets weren't in English but yet the English term "Happy New Year," trended.

I next analyzed how the term "Happy New Year" trended in other languages: Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic.

These trends align perfectly with the regions that celebrated New Year's Eve and their most common spoken language. The Spanish term spiked when Spain celebrated New Year's Eve and then again as midnight arrived in South America. The Russian term spiked, well, in Russia, and the Chinese in China.

Since the Arabic term showed low volume, we graphed it by itself to look for any interesting trends.

While the volume is low, the term trended in the regions you would expect it to trend: the Middle East and North Africa (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq). The big spike in GMT +9 can only be explained by usage in Indonesia.

Other Popular Keywords

Next, I looked at some of the most popular terms and how they trended on Twitter over the 20-hour of global New Year's celebration.

Unlike other terms that trended in spikes over the 20 hours, the term "kiss" spiked mostly on the East Coast. My only explanation to that is the celebration in NYC and the kiss-on-midnight tradition as the ball drops in Times Square.

I expected the term "countdown" to spike on the East Coast – just like the term "kiss" – but interestingly enough it peaked in Asia and Europe an hour (or less) before midnight reached China, Japan, and London.

The hashtag #NYE didn't trend on Twitter. While it showed high volumes by itself, it didn't take off as a trended term and showed minimal peaks throughout the night, eventually dying off when midnight reached the West Coast.

Somewhat expected, the term "2014" had the highest volume on Twitter, more than any other term. Fittingly, the term "2013" slowly disappeared as the actual year ended.

The term "2014" followed the similar trend the term "Happy New Year" followed, revealing similar usage patterns on Twitter: Asia, led by China and Japan, show strong usage followed by the East Coast and the UK region.

Tweet Elements

Lastly, I looked at the most popular tweet elements (retweets, links, hashtags, and pictures) and how they trended by time zone.

On average, retweets (RTs) were included in 43 percent of tweets showing the conversational nature of Twitter, especially in social events like New Year's Eve. Links, included in almost 25 percent of tweets, followed by hashtags (19 percent), and embedded media (15 percent).

Overall, it seems like the usage patterns of these tweet elements didn't vary much by region, although the peaks in RTs in Asia and in links on the West Coast are interesting.

The peak in RTs in Asia can be explained by the sheer volume of tweets that drove more RTs, However, you could argue that the RTs were what contributed to the overall volume.

The peak in percentage of links that happened on the West Coast can be explained by the fact that at that point, the celebrations all over the world were over and more content was produced that could be shared on Twitter, therefore the increase in shared links as percentage of total tweets.

Embedded media are pictures and videos that show up right in a tweet. Those would include pictures from TwitPic, images uploaded directly to a tweet, Vine videos, and YouTube videos.

Looking at the distribution of those you can see that pictures constitute a whopping 92 percent of all embedded media vs. only 8 percent of videos. In addition, images uploaded directly to a tweet (as represented by a URL that starts with "pic.twitter") are the preferred method of embedding media into tweets.

Lastly, we looked at the distribution of links from tweets to other social networks during the 20-hour New Year's Eve event.

Expectedly, we found that Instagram, which has a simple integration with Twitter, ruled the outbound links. Second was Tumblr and third was Path, both social networks enable sharing on Twitter and make it easy enough to post and share directly on Twitter. Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ had some percentage of links point to them, but compared to the overall content shared on Twitter, those were negligible.

Key Takeaways

What can we learn from this data, other than the fact that people love to party and share it on Twitter? Here are a few takeaways:

Twitter usage in Asia is astronomical.Even in non-English speaking countries, English terms can still trend (see "countdown" and "Happy New Year").Twitter is becoming the de facto universal online chat room where people actually have short conversations on (see percentage of RTs in tweets).Make it easy to share stuff on Twitter, and people will (see Instagram, Tumblr, Path).Twitter is becoming more and more about sharing media on Twitter (as opposed to using Twitter to link to media off Twitter) and having real interactions on Twitter. If you're marketing on Twitter, develop content that can stay on Twitter.Not on Twitter? What are you waiting for?

Any other observations? Share them here.

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Search engine DuckDuckGo is just over five years old, and has quite a bit to celebrate. In a recent announcement, the search engine proclaimed it served more than 1 billion searches in 2013.

Looking back on the year, the search engine appeared to experience highs that correlated heavily with current events, which DuckDuckGo annotates here.

See the annotation marked "I"? That's when DuckDuckGo says revelations about government surveillance began surrounding the NSA PRISM surveillance scandal. From summer to fall of 2013, traffic on DuckDuckGo grew from just under 2 million searches on June 6 to more than 4 million on November 10, 2013.

Last year, its "anonymous search" angle gave people an outlet for search after the PRISM leaks caused widespread concern over privacy. And even though major search enginesdenied involvement in PRISM, many still questioned how mainstream engines stored and used data when Web browsing.

In September, Google made its move to 100 percent encrypted search.

But it's not just encrypted search that DuckDuckGo says makes its search engine different. The search engine says it's better because it:

Has less spam and clutter by aggressively filtering content farms, only having one ad on results pages and so on.Showcases better instant answers "via partners like Wolfram Alpha and by developers contributing via our instant answer platform."Doesn't put users in a filter bubble. "We don’t bias search results towards what we think particular users would already agree with."

To give DuckDuckGo a try, check it out here.

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New Year's Eve is possibly the only event that is celebrated all around the world regardless of religion, culture, and race, but with one important characteristic: it's based on time zone.

While religious events, like Christmas, Rosh Hashanah, or Ramadan have a time-zone importance (they are celebrated at a specific time every year), they lack the global all-encompassing nature since they are specific to a religion.

Global events like the World Cup, the Olympic Games, or even the Oscars, might have the global importance but they aren't time-zone specific; they happen at a given point in time regardless of the rest of the world's time zone.

New Year's Eve is the one event that has both characteristics – it's global (or as global as it gets) and it's time zone specific. And why is that important? Well, because it creates an almost 20-hour celebration craze on social media that allows us to see how one, scheduled event impacts the world in different ways on social media.

To look into those usage patterns, I analyzed several aspects of the celebration as it transpired on Twitter around the globe as each region welcomed 2014. I analyzed volume of keyword mentions as well as some elements of tweets (like the existence of an image, a link or a hashtag) and charted them across the time zone of the regions that celebrated the New Year's Eve.

In all the charts below, the X-Axis represents midnight in each time zone in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). For example, the data that corresponds with GMT +0 is the activity on Twitter when midnight "hit" London.

"Happy New Year"

The term "Happy New Year" trended heavily on Twitter throughout the New Year's Eve celebrations. As midnight hit every time zone, the term spiked, indicating the level of social media usage in those regions.

As the graph shows, when midnight struck in China and Japan, Twitter exploded with more than 1.6 million tweets that included the term "Happy New Year". What's even more impressive is that the vast majority of these tweets weren't in English but yet the English term "Happy New Year," trended.

I next analyzed how the term "Happy New Year" trended in other languages: Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic.

These trends align perfectly with the regions that celebrated New Year's Eve and their most common spoken language. The Spanish term spiked when Spain celebrated New Year's Eve and then again as midnight arrived in South America. The Russian term spiked, well, in Russia, and the Chinese in China.

Since the Arabic term showed low volume, we graphed it by itself to look for any interesting trends.

While the volume is low, the term trended in the regions you would expect it to trend: the Middle East and North Africa (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq). The big spike in GMT +9 can only be explained by usage in Indonesia.

Other Popular Keywords

Next, I looked at some of the most popular terms and how they trended on Twitter over the 20-hour of global New Year's celebration.

Unlike other terms that trended in spikes over the 20 hours, the term "kiss" spiked mostly on the East Coast. My only explanation to that is the celebration in NYC and the kiss-on-midnight tradition as the ball drops in Times Square.

I expected the term "countdown" to spike on the East Coast – just like the term "kiss" – but interestingly enough it peaked in Asia and Europe an hour (or less) before midnight reached China, Japan, and London.

The hashtag #NYE didn't trend on Twitter. While it showed high volumes by itself, it didn't take off as a trended term and showed minimal peaks throughout the night, eventually dying off when midnight reached the West Coast.

Somewhat expected, the term "2014" had the highest volume on Twitter, more than any other term. Fittingly, the term "2013" slowly disappeared as the actual year ended.

The term "2014" followed the similar trend the term "Happy New Year" followed, revealing similar usage patterns on Twitter: Asia, led by China and Japan, show strong usage followed by the East Coast and the UK region.

Tweet Elements

Lastly, I looked at the most popular tweet elements (retweets, links, hashtags, and pictures) and how they trended by time zone.

On average, retweets (RTs) were included in 43 percent of tweets showing the conversational nature of Twitter, especially in social events like New Year's Eve. Links, included in almost 25 percent of tweets, followed by hashtags (19 percent), and embedded media (15 percent).

Overall, it seems like the usage patterns of these tweet elements didn't vary much by region, although the peaks in RTs in Asia and in links on the West Coast are interesting.

The peak in RTs in Asia can be explained by the sheer volume of tweets that drove more RTs, However, you could argue that the RTs were what contributed to the overall volume.

The peak in percentage of links that happened on the West Coast can be explained by the fact that at that point, the celebrations all over the world were over and more content was produced that could be shared on Twitter, therefore the increase in shared links as percentage of total tweets.

Embedded media are pictures and videos that show up right in a tweet. Those would include pictures from TwitPic, images uploaded directly to a tweet, Vine videos, and YouTube videos.

Looking at the distribution of those you can see that pictures constitute a whopping 92 percent of all embedded media vs. only 8 percent of videos. In addition, images uploaded directly to a tweet (as represented by a URL that starts with "pic.twitter") are the preferred method of embedding media into tweets.

Lastly, we looked at the distribution of links from tweets to other social networks during the 20-hour New Year's Eve event.

Expectedly, we found that Instagram, which has a simple integration with Twitter, ruled the outbound links. Second was Tumblr and third was Path, both social networks enable sharing on Twitter and make it easy enough to post and share directly on Twitter. Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ had some percentage of links point to them, but compared to the overall content shared on Twitter, those were negligible.

Key Takeaways

What can we learn from this data, other than the fact that people love to party and share it on Twitter? Here are a few takeaways:

Twitter usage in Asia is astronomical.Even in non-English speaking countries, English terms can still trend (see "countdown" and "Happy New Year").Twitter is becoming the de facto universal online chat room where people actually have short conversations on (see percentage of RTs in tweets).Make it easy to share stuff on Twitter, and people will (see Instagram, Tumblr, Path).Twitter is becoming more and more about sharing media on Twitter (as opposed to using Twitter to link to media off Twitter) and having real interactions on Twitter. If you're marketing on Twitter, develop content that can stay on Twitter.Not on Twitter? What are you waiting for?

Any other observations? Share them here.

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After running a link agency for the past few years, I can safely say that some clients are easy to work with and some are nightmares. I can also say that the ones who are easy and fun to work with are the ones that truly bring out my passion for the work that we do, and as I see with my own employees, being receptive to listening to someone else's perspective is something that I highly value.

It doesn't matter if a client's niche is exciting or if their site is so amazing that I want to spend hours on it every week. A client who is willing to view our arrangement as a give and take relationship is the client for me.

Here are 15 pieces of advice that will help you build a better relationship with your SEO provider.

1. Be Honest About What You've Done in the Past

This is probably the most critical piece of advice. Lots of clients have done some shady things that they might not have fully understood were being done, and many have known exactly what was being done and just chose to ignore the repercussions.

Be honest about what was done. It's rare to find someone who hasn't done some sketchy marketing at some point. We're not judging.

If you bought networked links and spammed the heck out of forums for three years, just admit it. Don't swear that those links were the result of a competitor trying to harm you. Lying just wastes everyone's time and energy.

Good clients will explain what they have done so their provider can find out how to fix it or counteract it faster, if needed.

2. Don't Immediately Blame Links When Something Goes Wrong

Don't immediately blame links if your SEO service provider has built one for you and you've just messed up your robots.txt file. Also, if your SEO provider has built some great links and your site skyrockets to the top of the rankings, generating lots of new traffic and conversions, don't try and insist that it had nothing to do with their work.

3. No Surprise URL Changes

Don't change URLs without 301ing them or telling your SEO provider about it. If you've provided some targets to work with and they are suddenly 404ing, that's embarrassing. Webmasters start to get cranky when you have to go back and request a change.

4. Share Access to Webmaster Tools and Analytics

If your SEO provider can't see what's happening, it's much harder to do a good job. Sure, we can bug you for this info, but it's much easier if we can dig in and not have to wait for you to come back from your weeklong vacation so we can get the data we need.

5. Answer Questions

I can promise you that I have never once asked a client a question simply because I was being nosey. If I ask whether you've just changed 100 URLs, to go back to harping on that one, it's because it affects my work.

If I do have access to your analytics and ask if you've done anything on-site that could account for the sudden drop in traffic to a specific page, again, it's not just because I have nothing better to do than ask irrelevant questions.

6. Listen to Our Advice on Risk

Not to be funny here, but if someone who doesn't mind buying links tells you that your link buying plan is just too risky, you really, really should listen. If we stand to make more money off building more links for you but we say we shouldn't do it, it's because we really believe that you're playing with fire.

7. Don't Employ Multiple Teams or People to do the Exact Same Thing

If you do this and both (or all 10) of us wind up getting links on the same site, don't complain about it and try and make some of us go back to the webmaster and get them removed.

8. Don't Share Someone Else's Confidential Information

If you send your provider something that is clearly marked as being "for your eyes only", all your provider will think is that one day you'll be sending their confidential information to someone else.

9. Be Clear About What You Want

Don't start out asking for one service and then run your provider all around until you finally admit that what you actually want is something totally different.

I've written up loads of consulting proposals for clients who asked for one specific service. Then, after spending loads of time on it, the clients admitted that they really just wanted me to go buy a bunch of links for them. If you want paid links, then say so.

10. Ask Why a Service Costs What it Does

We'd rather explain pricing to you now than receive a complaint about it later. The more you know about what we do, the better.

11. Don’t Ask About Price Matching

Don't give us pricing information that you've pulled off the site of some offshore SEO firm that no one's ever heard of and expect a provider to meet that price. If you do and your SEO provider says OK, be very nervous.

12. Be Fair About Client Examples

Don't freak out if your provider can't give you the example you want when you're trying to decide if they are the right fit. Sometimes there are iron-clad nondisclosure agreements in place.

However, please be receptive to ways that your provider can prove its worth without violating client confidentiality.

If that's a deal breaker, that's fine – and honestly it might be one for me if I were in your shoes. But if your provider can't give you client examples but can work for you and refund the cost if you're not satisfied, either accept that offer or move on and try to refrain from sending rude emails about a lack of professionalism.

13. Any Good Link Builder Knows About More Than Just Building Links

If you're asked to promote your new content socially to give it more attention, take that advice. Don't just think that because you can't immediately tie social to links, it means the advice is worthless.

If you're told to do a few things to speed up your homepage load time since it keeps timing out, listen. Link building is much easier when a site's worth linking to, you know.

14. Don't Focus on What Your Competitors Are Doing

Don't continually point out what your competitor is doing that violates Google's guidelines and ask why we don't just mimic them.

For one thing, your site is not the same as their site. For another thing, if you build a profile based on someone else, you're contributing to a footprint, and that's not a good thing.

Would you want them copying you? No.

15. Don't Try to Get Something for Free

I doubt you'd be able to find a decent SEO who doesn't end up giving away way too much for free. Many of us are actually nice people who are willing to share what we know and help people.

But there is a limit.

If you want to pay for an audit, then get a quote and pay for one. Don't try and weasel out pieces of an audit for free each month.

If you're paying for a service, stick to the scope of your contract. Asking a question here and there is OK, but if you want someone to spend 2 hours on the phone walking you through how to do something, expect to pay for that time.

Summary

It's critical that you're honest and willing to listen to your SEO provider.

You know how a lawyer wants to know the truth so they can best defend someone? While I realize that's a bit of an outlandish comparison, I'm still going to make it.

If you're paying us for our expertise, then accept that relationship and realize that most us do really want to do a great job for you. The more we know, the better we can perform.

See what's on the Agenda!Mar 31 - Apr 3 - ClickZ Live is a brand new global conference series kicking off in New York City. Learn how to improve customer engagement and attain maximum ROI, and gain invaluable digital marketing and advertising take-aways.Find out more ››*Super Saver Rates expire Jan 24.